Talking Sherry with Lucas Payá

The Spanish fortified wine has found legs in Nashville.

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Most likely, outside of a dinner at a Spanish restaurant or sitting in your granny’s parlor, Sherry hasn’t crossed your mind.

Lucas Payà thinks it’s time to dust off any old notions you might have and learn to appreciate the extraordinary versatility of the classic Spanish fortified wine.

It’s easy to see why one might want to follow Payà’s recommendations. He worked his way up to head sommelier at Ferran Adrià’s culinary outpost elBulli on the Catalunyan Costa Brava north of Barcelona. 

Being tasked with choosing the wine selections for what was considered the best and most famous restaurant in the world can robe you in a certain level of credibility. For perspective, Payà says that at its peak, elBulli had more than two million requests for roughly 7,100 seats each year. 

Payà was in town for the recent Nashville Cocktail Festival and I caught up with him at Peninsula in East Nashville, the ode to Iberian cuisine by Yuriko Say, Craig Schoen, and Jake Howell.

For more than two hours, Payà spoke about the continuum of wines that make up the Sherry palate while Schoen brought course after course of inventive dishes, like pork cheeks in squid ink, showing why Peninsula has become one of the city’s best. 

The first notion to dispel is that all Sherries are of the sweet, Dry Sack-meets-Bristol Cream variety that the British foisted upon us. 

“There are no limits to the cuisines you can pair them with,”

says Payà, starting with the pale, bone-dry Finos and Manzanillas. At the other end of the spectrum are the lush, dark, and sweet dessert wines, like the Pedro Ximénez. In between, balancing crispness and sweetness, are the Amontillados, Olorosos, and Palo Cortados, offering one of the broadest ranges within a singular wine category.

Payà now spends his time consulting, including work for Lustau, one of the premier Sherry houses of Spain, which is funding his work in educating bar managers in the U.S.

Sherry, or Jerez, its Spanish name, is made with a variety of white grapes that are made into wine and then fortified with alcohol. It’s a delicate dance of allowing natural yeasts to produce a flor in the barrel in an anaerobic environment for the pale dry wines, versus adding alcohol at higher levels, which kill the yeasts and creates an environment for oxidation to darken and enrich the wines.

Aging locations, too, play a part in the flavors, especially the maritime warehouses like the port of Sanlúcar de Barrameda, where subtle brininess adds to the complexity. All Sherries by law are made within the triangle of Cádiz, Spain’s southernmost point.

Schoen says diners in his restaurant are getting pretty hip to the many faces of Sherry; he sells more of Lustau’s product than any other restaurant in the state. Schoen also appreciates it mixability in cocktails- he use the Lustau Pedro Ximenez in a rendition of a gin and tonic. 

Of course, the nuance and complexity in making and blending Sherry is more than a rollicking dinner can capture, but the intriguing test that Payá shared certainly warrants more exploration. 

Peninsula, 615-679-0377; peninsulanashville.com